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thank you all

Ask Mr. Noise

Christopher Porter recently asked on his blog whether the music of Luigi Nono had any effect on Jerry Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes. Embarrassingly, I've never seen the grand original, though I did see the sucky Marky Mark remake. I've been listening to the Planet of the Apes soundtrack, and I'm not hearing anything that positively screams "NONO!" to me, like Lulu on the ropes. Instead, Goldsmith, like Michael Giacchino in the Alias music I talked about yesterday, draws selectively on devices from the 1950s / 1950s generation of avant-garde European tone-setters. The rapid, jerky, non-tonal movement among a pointillistic scattering of notes recalls Webern and his myriad 1950s clones. Tones that slither upward or downward in glissando motion are (to reuse yesterday's coinage) Xenakitastic, also Ligetidelic. The faintly upsetting mix of instrumental and electronic sounds evokes the tunecrib* of Milton Babbitt's electronic pieces. Pounding rhythmic themes for strings doubled by piano are très, très Bartok. Most original to my ear is the mixing of electric guitar with all the above; this is quite unusual for a composer writing in 1968, anticipating Bernstein's Mass (1971). All told, it's fabulously inventive film music, and I'm glad Mr. Porter led me to it. But as for Nono, I no know.